Recently, DVDs that I create on my computer DVD burner are no longer playing in my DVD player (normal standalone type connected to the TV). Older DVDs (that I’ve created) continue to play, so I don’t believe the problem is with the player.
I’m currently using a trial version of ULead to burn the DVDs. I downloaded and tried a freeware program (DIKO) to ensure the DVD burning s/w wasn’t the culprit. There is data being written to the DVD. You can access the DVD with Explorer and see the .vob files.
Is it possible this is a h/w problem? Could my burner have gone Tango Uniform but still write data? The burner is only a few months old and is a Sony DW-Q28A (which I believe does have reliability/QA problems), if that matters.
Any ideas on what could be causing this or how to troubleshoot it?
If it is a burner problem and I need to replace it, any recommendations?
What OS are you running (I presume it’s some version of Windows)? I’ve had XP flake on me and foul up a DVD burner in the past, and I had to do a reinstall of XP to get it working.
Another possibility is that if you recently installed a firmware/software patch, it could have made subtle changes to how it’s burning the media and your stand alone player may not be able to read the disks because of this. You might try playing the disks in a newer standalone player and see if they work in that.
If you do have to replace your drive, don’t by another Sony. What with their recent revelations that of spyware encoded CDs, they’re not deserving of any money, and there’s been hints that they may have installed something similar in their hardware. Given that the spyware has serious security flaws in it, you might been putting your PC at risk of being hacked by using anything produced by Sony.
I’m running XP. Can you do a reinstall over top of the existing XP w/out losing all your programs? I’d really hate to have to reinstall every program I own unless I know for sure that is the problem. Haven’t installed any firmware/sw patches. I’ve been racking my brain trying to remember if I’ve done anything to the PC. It took me awhile to even figure out what the problem was, so I’m not sure when it starte occuring.
Nope. There’s a couple of other ways you could check it, depending upon the configuration of your computer without wiping the drive out. If you’ve got enough free space on your hard drive, you could set your PC as a dual boot and then have it boot to either some flavor of Linux or earlier version of Windows. Or, if you’ve got more than 1 DVD drive, you could put a bootable Linux disk (say Knoppix) in the one drive, and trying burning a disk under Linux to see if it worked.
Have you tried to dup one of the working older DVDs and see if the copy will work on your player? When you burn, try burning at the slowest rate you can and make sure that there are no other programs running during the burn. If you follow this approach to burn and the copy doesn’t work, then I suspect a burner problem. Also, try playing the copy on another DVD player.
Didn’t think of duping an older one (did try with one that didn’t work in case it was the disk itself), I’ll try that and repost.
I did try the slowest speed and that didn’t seem to make a difference. One thing I noticed was that even at the slowest speed, the actual burn process is going much faster than it used to.
OK. I copied a working DVD and the copy doesn’t play, so it appears it is a h/w problem. It is weird that the files are on the disk, I guess they are just not good enough quality (?).
Thanks for all the help and suggestions.
Are they the same brand / batch of DVDs? I haven’t burnt video DVDs, so I can’t say anything about my DVD player, but I have bought some really crap DVDs that only (slightly) worked in one PC.
If that’s the case, you should go back to using the old media when burning video DVDs.
Yeah. It’s a cheap brand (forget the name), but I’m about halfway through a 25 pack and the first half was fine. They are RW (forget if they are + or - but my burner can handle both) and they seem to work fine whether it’s a first attempt or a rewrite.
Yes, media could also be the culprit. Try to use a brand name. One thing I forgot to ask is whether the non-working copies play on your PC. If they do, then your DVD player could also be the cause. That’s why I suggested you also try any copies on another player if you can. If the files appear to be burned correctly on the disc, try playing them on your PC. Just copy them to your PC and rename the .VOB files to .mpg and see if they will play. But, at this point, it does appear that you have a bum burner.
If they’re RW, then I’d say your media’s to blame (although the 1/2 normal burn time sounds like it could be a software issue, too). I’ve had nothing but bad luck with RWs, be they CD-RW or DVD-RW, name brand, or Wal-Mart bottom of the barrel brand. In fact, I no longer use them, since I can rarely get an RW disk to work more than a few times (and that’s one burn, multiple reads and NOT multiple burns, multiple reads).